When will we next see a GOP president?

Because I'm looking at Rubio and Mitch Daniels and Chris Christie and whoever else is waiting in the wings and thinking it's gonna be a long period of absence from the Executive for those clowns.

2016. Nothing will get done in the next term and Americans are fickle.

later than 2024

I know this has been bandied about in several threads, but who is the likely Dem in 2016?

maybe 2020 depending on how Hillary's first term goes

http://www.broadrecognition.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/02/480px-John_Boehner_official_portrait-480x288.jpg

Hillary is just as likely to run as to not run. If she declines, then who knows.

xp: who's she?

2016. Nothing will get done in the next term and Americans are fickle.

Maybe, but already disappeared are the GOP "broadening the base" and "new demographics" messages that circulated in November. After an ever so brief flirtation with reality, they've returned to the patriot/rich/white/male perch again.

2024

i don't see how HRC doesn't run. she's been immersed in the pursuit of political power for your entire adult life and is widely considered the front runner for president of the united states in 2016. unless someone drops a bunch of lsd into her afternoon tea and she decided that she wants to enjoy her retirement and truly begin to understand herself, maaaaaan, she'll grab at the presidency with maniacal crackly eyes

it's hard to predict things more than 10 years in the future (10 years ago what would the voting be on 'when will we have the first black president'?) but absent some v. unforeseen event happening in the next 4 years, the dems will win 2016, which makes them favorites for 2020. so I'm voting 2024.

and it's hard to judge how quickly the gop will learn from its losses but it's def stuck in a tricky place in that it needs more than just some darkhorse moderate to come save the day. it needs to radically shift its position on tons of things. but after a decade of rino-hunting, its stuck in a weird equilibrium where a small shift to the left is actually gonna lose more support than it gains.

re: Boehner

I used to think that guy probably had presidential ambitions, but now that I've seen how flimsy he is as a majority leader and how he basically has no respect from either side of the congressional aisle, I don't see how a run by him wouldn't end before the first primary takes place.

For all the Republican gaffes wrt emerging polical forces (young social liberals, Hispanics, etc), low info voters still vote their pocketbook. There are a number of regression formulas that predict the popular vote from economic indicators. The private credit unwind will only be 8 years old in 2016, and deleveraging after financial crises of the 1929/2007 variety generally is a generational (17-19 year) affair.

I'm not convinced that shale oil really makes the North America energy independent, and 2016 is past the 2014 end-of-global-oil production plateau that seems likely. Israel starts some shit with Iran in 2016, the Straits are temporarily closed, and with petrol is $6.00+/gal "drill baby drill" won't sound so asinine to the low info voter.

Against that, none of the Tea Party types seem particularly charismatic, and the establishment Republicans are worse. My prediction, Republican gains in 2014, a shallow drubbing in 2016, and perhaps by 2020 the GOP will discover if they have any Jon Huntsman-types left for national office.

lol Huntsman

next? we've had republican presidents for the last 30 years haven't we?

(real answer: 2024)

Huntsman had no impact on the primaries. He's done.

while its true that low info voters vote their pocketbook, the gop has been veering out of the world where they can even take advantage of a good-for-them election environment.

ie if the gop were operating like a rational political party that's there to win elections, we'd be in a different place regardless

I don't think HRC runs, but then again it's always seemed to me like people's reads on her are all really weird projection/wish-fulfillment stuff. I go with Amy Klobuchar. Amy Klobuchar you bastards

Btw, the only Senate Majority leader to win the presidency was LBJ. A house majority leader has never gone on to the presidency. State governors, particularly of swing states, are way more common as presidents. Something like a John Kasich/Susana Martinez slate, though unpopular with diehard Tea Partiers, might be formidable in the electoral college.

hey I would prefer Mikulski myself but whaddayagonnado

xp

Sanpaku otm about Boehner, don't think he ever had Pres ambitions

oh dude amy klobuchar would be so badass xxxpost

XP: by Huntsman types, I just meant the vanishing breed of pragmatic Republicans (Olympia Snowe etc..)

they're vanishing for a reason

my read on hillary clinton is she is an extremely ambitious person who wanted to be president and has the nomination - and probably the office - if she wants it.

'no no I'm too old and tired I think I will just hang around the house' ya fucking right

xp

hrc will be 69 on election day 2016
just like ronnie in 1980

'I could either be the first female president in american history or I could catch up on episodes of american idol'

^^^

once you run for president, you never stop running (as some guy said)

hrc will be 69 on election day 2016
just like ronnie in 1980

Wild Flag lyric?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4fTl-2YzZMI

they're vanishing for a reason

Parties are slow ships to turn around, but the DLC got Clinton into the presidency just 12 years after the electorate shifted markedly right under Reagan. Eventually power always trumps ideology.

I could definitely see a situation where Dems overreach and independent voters look for a moderate GOP alternative. Unfortunately, those folks don't survive the primaries.

so Sanpaku thinks the GOP is going to veer to the left

2013

which issues will the GOP pivot to the left on, do tell

xp

the 12 years of gop that clinton followed weren't 12 years of the democratic party defining itself as 100%obstructionist.

xp

Oh man I need to know if I am at liberty to tell the Klobuchar my friends told me

I'm just saying, the 1970s Democratic coalition of private sector unions and white ethnics just wasn't viable on the national field during the 12 years of Reagan/Bush, which lead to the DLC adopting a lot of the same positions & language and winning with Clinton. The 2000s Republican coalition of 1% money and evangelicals (and like jingoists & no-nothings) isn't really viable on the national stage going forward, so there will be triangulation there too. There's just too much money, power, and patronage jobs at stake for the connected to service Norquist and Dobson indefinitely.

remember when you'd see clinton wearing glasses? always reminded me of homer simpson wearing glasses for some reason.

Clinton's glasses were as much as prop as they were for his eyesight benefits.

http://s3-ec.buzzfed.com/static/enhanced/web05/2012/9/10/16/anigif_enhanced-buzz-7682-1347309774-4.gif

I'm just saying, the 1970s Democratic coalition of private sector unions and white ethnics just wasn't viable on the national field during the 12 years of Reagan/Bush, which lead to the DLC adopting a lot of the same positions & language and winning with Clinton. The 2000s Republican coalition of 1% money and evangelicals (and like jingoists & no-nothings) isn't really viable on the national stage going forward, so there will be triangulation there too. There's just too much money, power, and patronage jobs at stake for the connected to service Norquist and Dobson indefinitely.

this is true but the path from 'party that wins w/ unions and white ethnics and bargains w/ the gop' to 'centrist party that compromises w/ the gop a little more' is much more clear-cut than the path from 'batshit ayn randist party that refuses to ever, ever compromise, even when it its in their electoral best interests' to 'centrist part that compromises w/ the dems a little more'

^^^

they will basically have to jettison their base and make a grab for Dem constituencies, good luck with that guy

guys

ultimately the far-right is bigger and less compromising than the far-left and its an electoral trap in a sense

The DLC wasn't a grassroots initiative. There were no polls of union workers on how they felt about NAFTA or welfare reform.

^^ no polls by the DLC...

think we're all familiar with where the DLC came from/how it operated/what positions it espoused

genuinely curious about what issues you think the GOP will shift to the left/middle on, let's hear 'em

again, the DLC didn't ~radically shift the party~ because the party didn't radically shift, at least not the same way the gop is going to have to before it becomes competitive nationally.

and clinton didn't just win because of some DLC smokey rooms, he won because - as you mentioned - 1970 politics weren't as viable. the unions didn't matter because the unions didn't matter.

Clinton appealed to key demographics that the Dems had to (re)claim - white, Southern, male, working class, etc. also a hit with the ladies iirc.

who in the GOP is going to appeal to women, latinos/blacks/asians = no one

it's not just 'who is going to appeal', it's 'how do you even attempt to appeal when doing so will *lose you more votes than it gains*'

right. the math is brutal.

The two main power blocks in the GOP really have what, two or three issues they won't compromise on? Top marginal tax rates, overturning Roe v. Wade, and maybe still in 2020, same-sex marraige. There's some wiggle room left there for more nuanced views (say on deductions & loopholes) and elsewhere in the platform (environment, immigration, healthcare/pension privatization, bombing the rest of the world) that aren't as central to their core identity. Mind you, it won't happen prior to some electoral drubbing, but eventually a lot of politicians are more interested in power than ideology.

Remember, with a candidate as piss-poor as Romney the GOP still got 48% of the vote. We're not talking about irrelevant has-beens just yet.

(environment, immigration, healthcare/pension privatization, bombing the rest of the world) that aren't as central to their core identity

dunno about this bro

different republicans have different incentives and v. few have anything close to the incentives of 'dude running for president'. ie 'the party' has reason to want to be less racist etc but lots of individual politicians will lose their jobs if they start shifting to the left on immigration. and very few will get any large personal benefits from doing so.

the gop isn't irrelevant has beens because of congress and esp the senate but they've lost 5 out of 6 last popular votes in an era that was wayy better for them demographically than the coming few decades are gonna be.

xxxpost: the GOP core is pretty committed to all of that stuff, and the one issue that a GOP pres might wobble on (immigration) also happens to be one that the republican base is totally unwilling to compromise on.

great thing about romney losing is the GOP will likely believe they were not conservative enough and send some trupatriot in 2016, then they will reanimate strom thurmond in 2020

I haven't heard any GOP legislators "shift" an inch on gay marriage, immigration, climate change, and so on in the two months since the nation voted decisively on the party's coming obsolescence.

remember when you'd see clinton wearing glasses? always reminded me of homer simpson wearing glasses for some reason.

― (The Other) J.D. (J.D.), Thursday, December 27, 2012 5:04 PM (34 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i saw him speak a few weeks ago and he used the glasses to perfect effect

the funny thing is, even if the party finds a way to do a major immigration compromise, they're still gonna be on the right-wing side of the compromise. like what are these imaginary single-issue hispanic voters gonna think 'well, they're still worse on immigration but...I guess they're less racist?'

'so I'll vote for them'

http://discourseincsharpminor.files.wordpress.com/2010/05/clintonglasses.jpg

let's hear 'em

What about a Paulite move to libertarianism; streamlined military, declassification of weed as a class A drug, abortion left to the States...

I mean, that's not anarcho-syndicalism but it might peel some of Obama's coalition away, especially as they get older and the older Republicans for whom those are anathema die off.

military about as important to the American right as abortion

Not to 'libertarians'

they only exist on the internet

Let's not forget that before the Cold War, the Republicans were as likely to see a large military as a potential teat for the undeserving poor to suckle at, a potential threat to domestic liberties and an unnecessary expenditure. The threat of Godless communism (and the opportunity to outflank the Democrats on the issue) may have changed that and they may still want to bomb Iran and whatnot but Rand pretty successfully made the argument to college-age independents that we needn't be messing in everybody else's business all the time and that containment can be made to work. I certainly hear that from enthusiatic young Paultards and who knows what their future (in the GOP) may be.

Paul's said his career is basically over right?

Similarly, there's been a huge shift in the past two years at the state level against the financial costs of the prison system, and eventually that may run to a reconsideration of what it means to be the nation with by far the highest incarceration rate.

that hasn't been driven by the electorate (which is largely ignorant/unwilling to consider the costs of prisons), that's been driven at the legislative level by drastically constricted budgets

the robert taft/eisenhower GOP is gone forever and there's no bringing it back, any more than the democrats are about to turn back into the dixiecrats. i don't think the 'paulite' contingency has much hope of changing the mainstream GOP -- there's no way in hell that mainstream republicans are going to turn against the national security state or start fretting over drones. the paulites would be better off starting a third party (not that i think that'd really work either).

and Taft and Ike had two different visions for the GOP!

As the driving force, yes. But there's been a number of Republican governors that have also begun pushing back at the prison-industrial complex as being counterproductive and a waste of human resources/potential, at least for half inprisoned for non-violent offences.

http://tammybruce.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/11/Reagans.1981.Toast-209x300.jpg

personally my ideal GOP candidate would be fightin' bob la follette, but he's probably not gonna fly even with the paul crowd.

Fightin' Bob would be on Bernie Sanders' side of the aisle now.

i feel like a straight ticket of any fresh faced males the GOP can find, against hillary & whoever for the dems, is still appealing & viable in 2016. i am totally into & heartened by the demographic-shift kinda thing but i also feel like someone who can convincingly grip a podium & spin some fresh sounding bullshit has the capacity to win over the fascinating-to-think-about five percent of voters who whimsically rebound around between elections, captive to momentum & narratives & divorced from in-depth analysis. as recently as this year & even more so in 2008 it was possible for a candidate to run without facing serious questions & without taking big hits whenever additional evidential proof of their mendacity came up (fine applying this to either candidate fwiw). nobody ever liked mitt, someone who was more of a blank canvas, onto whom people could project a little more, could do well imo, they just need a new line of BS.

But there's been a number of Republican governors that have also begun pushing back at the prison-industrial complex as being counterproductive and a waste of human resources/potential, at least for half inprisoned for non-violent offences.

― Pauper Management Improved (Sanpaku), Thursday, December 27, 2012 6:17 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

who?

a) it hasn't been that long since turd blossom was talking about a permanent gop majority; everyone chill

b) wanna hear djp's klobuchar stories

The batshit cartoons thread had mentions of the inefficacy of drug and liquor bans. I don't expect much ideological coherence out of parties in a two party system but I can certainly see ppl waking up to the fact that the war on drugs is massively expensive and also massively feckless.

I miss the Roosevelt/Taft Republicans but they are officially communists now.

I don't think the GOP needs to find some magic new political philosophy or issue, it just needs to accept that viable political parties are forced to compromise. lotta far right types are gonna have to grit their teeth and vote for republicans who are running more or less how a moderate dem would run today. this sounds like an easy change but it's actually not, considering that they've spent two decades believing in and promoting the idea of ideological purity.

c) where is morbs

Never again. I think this party is done. It'll take a few more election cycles before it's completely replaced by a new second party.

ie every 'thing they can maybe win on' (war, prison, drugs, immigration, etc.) isn't actually viable because in order for it to be a winning issue for them they can't just soften their stance, they have to actually take a more radical stance than the dems. it's just not very conceivable even if it makes sense on paper for the republicans to turn into the libertarian party or w/e, the dems will always outflank them on drugs.

2016.

'oh man we weren't looking at the entire country shifted its position on drugs/immigration/etc. and it's more left wing than the dem party line. and the republicans got all those votes.'

politics is unfortunately a lot more boring than this.

Third time's the charm: Romney will be back in 2016. Of course, his positions will be totally different from everything he claimed to stand for in 2012.

This time he's running as a Democrat.

xp Hungry4Ass:

http://thinkprogress.org/justice/2012/08/02/627751/three-republican-governors-embrace-prison-reform-saving-hundreds-of-millions-of-dollars/

See also:

http://www.thedailybeast.com/articles/2011/07/03/gop-leaders-warm-up-to-prison-reform.html

What's more likely, that the Tea Partiers and "RINO"-calling crazies take over the party or the RNC ppl?

there is barely a distinction at this point

GO TO HELL EVERYONE

There is some distinction, Romney (and moreso Ryan) being definite GOP establishment favorites. The GOP would honestly have been better served in the long run had they picked Santorum or Perry and really been trounced. As it stands, too many of the Tea Party types can point to disinterest in Romney by core constituencies as the reason for his failure.

ryan existing as an establishment favorite is kinda the point - dude is a radical randist ideologue and in 2012 is the establishment's 'smart guy'

there's nobody on the inside saying 'you guys, wait a minute'

puppet masters drinking the kool aid

Puppet masters buying the ingredients for the Kool-Aid.

GO TO HELL EVERYONE

missed u boo

will Romney really run again? I will laugh my ass off if Romney runs again.

no literally everybody in america who isn't in his family hates him

that's only like half of america but it's still enough to ensure he can't win

Romney III: richer and soberer - "this time it's personal": Vengeance Hour

will Romney really run again? I will laugh my ass off if Romney runs again.

I really think he might, just because he has such total contempt for everyone who's not blood related to him that he'll just naturally think "it's been four whole years - all is forgiven, surely" and get out there with his Guy Smiley hair and attempt to sell an entirely new set of policy positions based on whatever's popular the week he launches his campaign. He'll get fucking slaughtered, of course - he'll do worse than Gingrich. But he'll try, because fuckers like him never learn - the sense of entitlement that fuels him is almost impervious to logic and reason.

Clinton always gives me a Gene Scott vibe when he wears glasses.

http://images.politico.com/global/news/090616_clinton2_ap_297.jpg http://www.qsl.net/wd8das/genescot.jpg

It isn't question of the GOP veering leftward, so much as whether or not the country will suddenly veer right. Since I was born it has been R-D-D-R-(R)-D-R-R-D-R-D. The (R) was Gerald Ford, who never was elected president.

In my lifetime, each succesive Republican president has been to the right of the previous Republican president, with the possible exception of G.H.W. Bush, who did the very best imitation of a Reagan mini-me he knew how to do, but who once or twice did something moderate by mistake.

So, no matter how far right the Republicans can be predicted to stay, the USA could very well swing over rightward to meet them. It has happened quite a bit in my experience. When LBJ is the most progressive president you've ever known, it is hard to think a big shift further left is just about to occur.

no literally everybody in america who isn't in his family hates him

his strength as comic figure is rising quickly in my brain i.e. I laugh very hard just thinking of him now. Romney 2016: Familiarity Breeds Contentment

maybe they'll try to nominate Daniel Day Lewis with his Lincoln beard

so much as whether or not the country will suddenly veer right.

demographics don't favor this shift. latino population is not going to suddenly veer to the right on immigration, for ex.

That's the argument. But if you suppose that something actually gets accomplished on an issue like immigration, then, if that resolution is acceptable to latinos, that issue goes away and no longer drives voting behavior. Yes, the democrats would be rewarded for winning, but that effect fades over time.

The Republicans are on the losing side of several national issues atm, and they've bound themselves closely to the voters who take that losing side. But as soon as they truly lose, as opposed to just retaining enough power to cause a stalemate, then new issues can arise, allowing for a possible Republican rebound, depending on how they exploit those new issues. Their current coalition has grown pretty stale, but I'm sure they'll find a way to freshen it up before too many election cycles pass.

http://fivethirtyeight.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/27/as-swing-districts-dwindle-can-a-divided-house-stand/

this sorta gets at what I was saying earlier about mismatched incentives

http://graphics8.nytimes.com/images/2012/12/26/us/politics/fivethirtyeight-1226-polar1/fivethirtyeight-1226-polar1-blog480.png

when the majority of gop congresspeople - in 2012 - won *landslide* elections w/ tea party politics, it's pretty difficult to imagine some big picture ideological shift is in the near future

The non-wingnut portion of the GOP will attempt to pitch Marco Rubio as the "true heir" of the JFK legacy, and they will be left in the dust by the Tea Party types.

Rubio isn't even popular in Florida, or among other non-Cuban latinos

iirc

The idea of the Republican Party getting replaced, like the Whigs, in our lifetimes, is slim. And unless that happens, they’ll return to power, because America thinks one-party rule is unnatural. If they survived Nixon, they’ll survive Bush and Boehner.

So, cheer up, National Review cruisers! You’ll probably win the House, Senate and presidency in 2020.

http://www.salon.com/2012/12/28/the_republicans_will_be_fine/

i guess we know how pareene voted now

Re: issues ''going away'' - do you really think so? Roe v. Wade still has electoral juice in it 40 years out and it was a major driver of things ten or fifteen years ago. Even if something gets 'accomplished' on immigration, it will be a huuuuge shot in the arm for conservative politicians looking for a red-meat issue. Republicans who voted for whatever it was will suddenly be vulnerable, etc etc, people who are ''soft on Obamagration'' or w/e will be doomed...

It really doesn’t matter how awful the Republicans are, because a) they’ve got a gerrymandered House majority that is practically guaranteed through 2020 and b) American history teaches us that Americans vote for each party about 50% of the time almost no matter what.

b) is ridiculous logic. first it's...not true. second insofar as it is true, it's true because parties usually have flexibility in a two-party system and can adjust. that flexibility is severely constrained for the gop and that's why they're in a long-term trap.

http://voteview.com/political_polarization.asp

Polarization declined in both chambers from roughly the beginning of the 20th Century until World War II. It was then fairly stable until the late 1970s and has been increasing steadily over the past 25 years. Our (Poole and Rosenthal, 1997) original D-NOMINATE estimation ended with the 99th Congress. Interestingly, Congresses 100- 112, if anything, mark an acceleration of the trend (especially in the House). Note, however, that the acceleration is smooth and does not show a particular jump in polarization induced by the large Republican freshman class elected in 1994. Polarization in the House and Senate is now at the highest level since the end of Reconstruction.

'republicans survived nixon', they'll always come back, people get bored with one party etc - this is all irrelevent because there has been no era in american politics in the last 100 years that is comparable to what's going on atm

voted "never again" just cos it felt good

Automatic thread bump. This poll is closing tomorrow.

Automatic thread bump. This poll's results are now in.

lol reality?

altho 2016 'won' the tally is 36 to 14 that they won't win in 2016

ilx polls are a good way of understanding why a two party system is a very rational equilibrium for a voting system like ours

baffled at who these 14 people think the winning GOP nom is going to be

i think if the GOP becomes the party of getting rid of the 20th century american state (whether they get cool-libertarian on other shit or not) they'll be plenty competitive. especially as taxation demographics shift to the point where paying for middle class retirees dwarfs every other thing the public sector does -- don't forget the state level effects here.

they wouldn't even have to go after the stuff that might make a liberal happy (the military, prisons, etc). i could very well see one of the conservative states getting rid of its land grant schools, for instance.

scott walker redditors something something on a human face, for the time being

lol at the idea of these chumps getting their act together in the next 4 years. it's my understanding that the dems are running luriqua in 2016 and nate silver's already predicting a landslide

hillary bloodclot revote

baffled at who these 14 people think the winning GOP nom is going to be

Who's going to be the Dem? The 69-year-old woman with the blood clot? The 74-year-old "big fuckin' deal" VP?

If the GOP can manage to run someone who doesn't have to angle hard-right during the primaries and come off like a moderate, it's not hard to fathom one getting elected.

This would be, of course, if the Republicans learn anything from 2012. Which they might not.

The 69-year-old woman with the blood clot?

yes

If the GOP can manage to run someone who doesn't have to angle hard-right during the primaries and come off like a moderate, it's not hard to fathom one getting elected.

at this point I think it's more likely that a unicorn will become President in 2016

If the GOP can manage to run someone who doesn't have to angle hard-right during the primaries and come off like a moderate, it's not hard to fathom one getting elected.

I think that's impossible at present. Any moderate will get chewed for being exactly that. The GOP leadership may have at least pretended to learn a lesson from 2012, but the base will fuck up their prospects in the next primary.

the real tell IMO is going to be who runs in the midterm election

Which Dems would challenge Hillary in their primary? Biden, maybe, but would anyone else even bother? Her rep is completely different now than it was in 2007/08, and her "inevitability" compounded a hundred or thousandfold.

her rep for doing what fuckall exactly

I realize "nothing except complicity in long-distance murder" is a good precedent given the current POTUS

Don't think like Morbs for a minute. Think like Average McAverageton in suburban Illinois. Her rep is pretty strong now, for whatever reason.

she's FAMOUS! and her husband got blown.

http://content8.flixster.com/photo/12/81/59/12815914_ori.jpg?

I think that's impossible at present. Any moderate will get chewed for being exactly that. The GOP leadership may have at least pretended to learn a lesson from 2012, but the base will fuck up their prospects in the next primary.

yup.

again this is not just 'learn a lesson from 2012' - the same thing happened in 2008. and the next candidate, whoever he is, will almost def have *less* of a moderate background to run on than mccain or romney.

Something for all of you to ridicule: Bill James thinks the Republicans will be fine (excerpt from one of two longish pieces).

The same with the alleged degeneration of the Republican Party. Yes, it is possible that the Republican Party will implode, and their place in the political forum will be taken by the Libertarians; it is possible. This would be parallel to the player who drops from 34 homers to 13 homers then losing his status as a regular, thus hitting 5 home runs in the third season (or negative 8.)

But it is much, much more likely that the Republican Party will recover and win the off-year elections in 2014. The Yammering Heads on TV who talked endlessly after the election about the dreadful problems of the Republican Party are, in my view, on the same level as that nitwit who talked about John Mayberry hitting negative eight home runs in 1977. They have blinded themselves to the obvious parameters of the problem.

(I am not agreeing or disagreeing--just passing it on.)

i think if the GOP becomes the party of getting rid of the 20th century american state (whether they get cool-libertarian on other shit or not) they'll be plenty competitive. especially as taxation demographics shift to the point where paying for middle class retirees dwarfs every other thing the public sector does -- don't forget the state level effects here.

― goole, Friday, January 4, 2013 12:20 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

the problem the boomer retirees vs everyone else narrative doesn't really work for the gop even if it is basically the future of american politics. 'we have to pay for the old people sorry young people' isn't gonna increase your voteshare, 'we have to cut the money for old people' isn't gonna either. the gop benefits from the generational war *not* being a prominent narrative because ultimately it comes down to voters fighting for shit they want from the gov't, not fighting for shit they want the gov't to cut.

i could very well see one of the conservative states getting rid of its land grant schools, for instance.

a football team with some crappy online classes seems like the future of a lot of these places

every time I have seen bill james say anything non-baseball related he has been wrong

I think what people don't understand is that the republican party implosion is a slow motion car crash, there prob won't be a new party coup anytime soon but they're falling into a nash equilibrium where they can't compete nationally and but also can't deviate from satisfy-the-crazy-southerners-politics.

that they can still win some elections in the short-term - they are still living off their 2010 incumbencies etc in the house and the senate is by nature balanced towards them - doesn't change this. in a sense the republican party doesn't need to change, the people who vote for it need to change, and they aren't.

my completely bullshit opinion on current 'front-runners' being bandied about:
Rubio and especially Ryan have too much tea party stank on them. Ryan lied A LOT during '12 and has a lot ideas about government that are pretty far afield of the mainstream. his trail of horseshit is going to be hard to disavow. the viral nature of modern campaigning will not be kind to him. he may poll decently(?) right now, but i really don't think he'll stand up to serious scrutiny.

Rubio has more appeal, but there's something kind of insubstantial about him imo. for now, anyway. maybe he'll seem much more baller after he runs the gauntlet that will be the GOP primaries.

i admittedly don't know much about the guy, but Jeb Bush is still a Bush. fuckin BUSH, y'all.

only Christie to me seems to have the gravitas and appeal to win over the necessary moderates and swing voters to get POTUS. yeah he fat, but eh.

on balance (tee hee), americans love fat people that yell a bunch. at least that's what my gut tells me (tee hee)

christie has the magic triumvirate of qualities

- perceived bipartisanship ("he didn't hate obama that one time when the hurricane came and FEMA helped") regardless of actual policies, which most voters don't even care to learn about
- name recognition
- he is a fat guy that yells a lot

he's purposely distancing himself from the party which may or may not help him, it's a bet on where things are gonna be

as long as the Teabags are able to throw their weight around, i don't see any potential GOP Presidential candidate winning. Christie simply isn't flexible enough (no, this isn't a subtle fat joke) to pander to them in order to win the nomination and remain viable to the population-at-large. TBF to Christie, i don't know if any politician is that flexible.

The fat thing really fucks Christie. A lot of Americans are fat, but that doesn't mean they'll vote for a fat guy - our media is full of self-loathing stories about how disgusting fat people are. A president with a full beard would win before a fat guy, I think, and we haven't had a bearded president since Benjamin Harrison, who left office in 1893.

I think a bearded dude or a fat guy would both win before another president with a mustache, especially a Teddy Roosevelt-type mustache.

If Christie starts to lose weight, that's a big non-verbal clue that he'll run for President.

i sense a stirring for zombie taft in 2016

fat will happen before beard

And suddenly, a new contender emerges.

http://media.giantbomb.com/uploads/0/598/192280-comic_book_guy_13018_large.jpg

we haven't had a bearded president since Benjamin Harrison, who left office in 1893.

has anyone noticed

my hs gov teacher once pointed out that if a politician has a beard he is not a republican

that might hold true for non-politicians too

Benjamin Harrison was a Republican!

or do you mean now

the bass player in my former band was a super Reaganite and he rocked a goatee for years

xp now

also, was Lincoln our last neckbearded President?

I suspect a lot of the Tea Party will be less assholish in 2016. They tried an election their way and it didn't work. They're seeing the GOP straight-up lose on big issues.

Timeline of angry Democratic voters:
2000: The Republicans and Democrats are EXACTLY THE SAME!!!!
2004: Okay, that was untrue, but we're not that excited by the candidate
2008: FUCK, I don't care who the Democrats nominate as long as it's not Bush I'll canvas the streets.

2016 may be the Tea Party's 2008, IMO - they'll be more willing to fall in line for someone electable just so long as it's not Obama

On a related note:

http://m.gawker.com/5973178/predicting-2013-dont-worry-the-tea-party-will-be-fine

did you sleep through 2008 or something

http://thinkprogress.org/wp-content/uploads/2009/06/bork.jpg

also btw Truman would apparently grow a goatee while on vacation

did you sleep through 2008 or something

I don't see a reason to pretend that the right wing of the GOP aren't rational actors willing to sabotage their election chances forever in the name of ideological purity.

http://1.bp.blogspot.com/_y9O5dPEqMbU/R9aIjnUy-EI/AAAAAAAAA1A/wNiJTqtX_k4/s400/larry+craig+and+wife.jpg

hi dere! All I could find of Truman on vacation. Rockin' shirt.

http://www.nps.gov/hstr/historyculture/images/66-857.jpg

plains wins

there probably was not an election where dems were more enthusiastic about their candidate in the last 50 years so uh "FUCK, I don't care who the Democrats nominate" is uh xp

which totally had nothing to do with Obama '08 basically running on an 'everything Bush did, I will do the opposite' platform and everyone wanting to exorcise the country of 2001-2009

saw Coburn rockin a beard the other day.

https://twitter.com/TomCoburnsBeard

On a related note:

http://m.gawker.com/5973178/predicting-2013-dont-worry-the-tea-party-will-be-fine

― "It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Drunk!" (kingfish), Friday, January 4, 2013 11:49 AM (4 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

moreover basically all of perlstein's goldwater book and the first half of his nixon one is about loling at columnists/pundits who proclaimed the conservative version of the republican party totally unviable

the modern gop's demographic problems seem more way serious to me than "lyndon johnson's approval ratings are very high" tho

like, the doomsayers will always be around and will always be successful w "the base", but nixon didn't resurrect the party by doomsaying; he did it by harnessing the fear/resentment of the white/"patriotic" majority towards the black/war-opposing minority, which is exactly the strategy that is not working so well now

anyway i plan to become the first bearded president but as i'm totally unelectable it'll have to be a coup

I dunno; I think as long as we live in the modern world, we're going to have people who feel victimized by modernity, just due to how the human brain is wired.

And the fact that we're stuck with the brains we have.

anyway i plan to become the first bearded president but as i'm totally unelectable it'll have to be a coup

http://3.bp.blogspot.com/-TFacdZ1yaYQ/ULPMzDgiMWI/AAAAAAAADRU/uehULhpWxiw/s640/bananas3.jpeg ?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Z1QVthvDhPo

I always loved that they had the blazer there too

that scene + the abrupt loud opening credits have always been how i want movies to start

getting a bunch of racist white ppl to vote against their economic interests was a neat trick that stopped working when there stopped being enough white ppl. i don't see how the republicans can change or evade this fact.

People don't vote according to their economic interests

people vote for a lot of different reasons

I think the answer is "after the next 'Dem' recession" btw

many people do vote according to their economic interests (among other things) but it's highly region-dependent

http://andrewgelman.com/2010/12/the_red-state_b/

chris christies main hurdle is not that hes fat its that hes a tremendously unappealing asshole

i mean americans may not like fattys but they def dont like people who yell a lot, at least not in their presidents

he could get elected maybe jets head coach

People don't vote according to their economic interests

― "It's the Stay-Puft Marshmallow Drunk!" (kingfish), Friday, January 4, 2013 8:39 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lotsa rich people do. They even start PACs for their economic interests.

the economy is one of the things people vote about, some people like racism more tho

chris christies main hurdle is not that heis fat its that hes a tremendously unappealing asshole

fixed

ew

the economy is one of the things people vote about, some people like racism more tho

― lag∞n, Friday, January 4, 2013 8:16 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

there can be overlap too, like lotsa people long for the days when all you needed for a good job was to be a white dude

oh wow a white dude and you went to college too, here have this, it is a well paying job for life, you are a god

its really the perfect vote in a lot of ways

yeah it's kinda annoying when people frame it as a buncha people being taken advantage of

lotsa people are rationally voting for their racist interests

http://www.nj.com/news/index.ssf/2013/01/christie_looks_back_on_how_san.html

A decisive win in a blue state also could help pave the road to a 2016 White House bid. "Life is life; you never know what it’s going to confront you with," he said.

"But I’m asking for four years and I intend to serve four years."

Would he be more ready than he was when a chorus of Republican donors urged him to seek the 2012 GOP nomination?

"Yeah, you’re damn right I’d be more ready," Christie said.

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/images/christie-cover.jpg

giuliani part 2, enjoy yr second place new hampshire primary finish, glory days

Innocuous things that make you irrationally angry (a list thread)

i kinda like martin schoeller

http://cdn.wl.uproxx.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/10/johnny_unitas_simpsons.jpg

Nobody's formally declared yet, right? I mean, Rubio has already been to Iowa about 20 times, but nothing formal.

Starting to doubt, also, that Christie will actually do it.

My boy be havin' trouble lately.

he's playing to evangelicals to try to hold off considerable base support he lost w/ immigration (no real strong competition on that front either; santorum got it by default in 2012 and recent polls have him as a bottom also-ran). christie's running. rand paul's the wildcard to me, could see argument for him just building power in senate, running as a means of determining direction of party (esp on foreign policy), or just normal 'wants to be president' run. there was a poll out of iowa showing hillary beats any gop front runner easy but any gop front runner beats any non-hillary dem easy. this is probably meaningless though - aside from biden how many non-hillary dems have iowans even heard of? 'o yeah, that's the guy carcetti from the wire was based on'? could mean something in terms of dems inability to overcome general negative gop numbers in 2014 though, esp combined w/ prez approval numbers.

Christie and paul and rubio are all in. None of them have a prayer against hillary

Well, if those three are in, we need Ted Cruz to make it a party.

Theres gotta be one wildly racist conspiracy theory nutjob ... not sure if paul or cruz fits the bill better

Only one? Oh Shakey.

A fascinating read in 2016.

lol it really is.

did we ever find out if HRC was going to run

We might just be days from an announcement either way.

unless HRC is horrifically bad, I say we don't see another GOP president for another 12 years at the earliest.

not one mention of Trump itt

I was right fuiud

Theres gotta be one wildly racist conspiracy theory nutjob

a lot of the comments itt were spot-on

REO Speedwagon's "Take It On the Run" a fitting postlude to the GOP campaign

guess it all depends on how long they can keep running with the inspiring message of "we aren't Donald Trump"

idk, Z S almost predicted trump:

- name recognition
- he is a fat guy that yells a lot

Fuck us, we got it right after all.